FIG. 1 shows a prior art cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) 10, which includes a glass tube 102 with the inner wall thereof coated with fluorescent phosphor 100, conducting wire 104, a pair of electrodes 106, induction gas 108, and mercury atoms 110. The electrodes 106 are sealed on both sides inside of the CCFL 10, and the ends of the electrodes 106 are respectively coupled to a conduction wire 104 extending outside of the lamp for connecting with power supply wire, so as to conduct electrical current, thereby causing the lamp to illuminate.
Typically, the wire 104 of the CCFL 10 and the power supply wire are connected with one another by soldering or being wrapped together in strip copper. Nevertheless, connection means of either soldering or strip copper wrapping requires intensive and complex processing steps, and thus problems caused by poor processing often occur. For example, if soldering is adapted, cold solder resulted from poor soldering can cause the high temperature generated during lamp illumination to burn out the tin solder at the junction of the connecting wires, creating an open circuit. On the other hand, if strip copper wrapping is adapted, potential point discharge at the sharp-angled spots of the strip copper can occur.
On other hand, in backlight module applications, each frequency converter, such as an inverter for example, is only capable of driving one to two CCFLs. As the size of display becomes larger, the number of lamps used increases, such that more frequency converters are required to drive the increased lamps. However, increasing the number of frequency converters will inevitably raise the overall power consumption as well as the temperature.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a discharge lamp that has a low fraction of defects, requires low energy and produces low pollution.